UK Government Has to Deal With Genocide Amendment ‘One Way or the Other’: Duncan Smith
If the UK government wants its post-Brexit Trade Bill to become law, it has to deal with the genocide amendment “one way or the other,” former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said on Thursday.
The genocide amendment aims to stop bilateral trade with genocidal countries, and is the last remaining obstacle to the Trade Bill becoming law.
The amendment is stuck between the House of Lords, which supports it, and the House of Commons, where the Tory government is struggling to whip its backbench MPs into rejecting it.
UK Peers Pass Lord Alton’s Genocide Amendment for Third Time
In a final attempt to give legal backing to the recognition of state genocide in relation to trade, the UK’s House of Lords on Tuesday passed a “genocide amendment” for the third time.
The amendment to the UK’s post-Brexit Trade Bill, proposed by Lord Alton of Liverpool, seeks to establish an ad-hoc Parliamentary Judicial Committee (PJC) that could make a preliminary determination on whether a partner in a relevant bilateral trade agreement with the UK has committed genocide.
If such a determination is made, the Secretary of State must give a satisfactory statement on the actions the government will take, or the committee will set out the wording of a motion for Parliament to debate and vote on.
Legitimacy of Trading With Genocidal Countries Is the Battle of Our Times: Lord Alton Genocide amendment author confident House of Lords will send amendment back to Commons
The legitimacy of trading with genocidal countries is the battle of our times, the UK’s Lord Alton of Liverpool has said, drawing parallels with the opium and slave trades in past centuries.
Lord Alton is the author of an amendment to the UK’s post-Brexit Trade Bill often dubbed the “genocide amendment,” which, if adopted, would give UK courts the power to determine whether a current or potential trade partner has committed genocide.
UK Lawmakers to Fight for Genocide Amendment as Compromise Version Pushed Through
The UK Parliament on Tuesday passed a compromise version of an amendment to its post-Brexit Trade Bill on curbing trade with genocidal countries.
The amendment (pdf), proposed by Conservative MP Robert Neill and backed by the government, was put before MPs instead of Lord Alton’s original version, which won by a two-thirds majority in the House of Lords on Feb. 3.
While the government argued that Neill’s amendment is “superior,” supporters of the original amendment condemned the government for tabling what they called a “wrecking amendment,” and vowed to keep fighting for the original one.
THE Tories have come under fire for celebrating the “return of the booze cruise” as a “Brexit boost” to areas which support ferry services to Europe. From January 1, the regime covering what goods could be brought into the UK from overseas duty-free was applied to EU countries for the first time since 1999. At the same time, the Government increased personal allowances so that passengers coming to Great Britain can now bring in, for example, three crates of beer, two cases of still wine and one case of sparkling wine duty-free. However, as part of the changes, VAT-free shopping for non-EU international travellers came to an end.